


Familiarity and Contempt

by coolant



Series: Jan, The Bull, and The Wolf [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Solas is a pompous asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21662941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolant/pseuds/coolant
Summary: He felt familiar yet cold. Desperate for comfort, she extended her hand.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan
Series: Jan, The Bull, and The Wolf [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/330718
Kudos: 5





	Familiarity and Contempt

The day they reached Skyhold was a hectic one. After the journey itself was finished, there was organizing, arranging, commanding to be done. For the first few nights, all slept sparingly in tents, working in shifts to get the fort into working order.

Jan enjoyed the steady chaos of those early days. She appreciated the concrete sense of momentum. Always an achievable task left to do.

Once furniture was obtained, Jan’s room was the first to be furnished. She’d insisted against it, but someone had decided to ignore her. Josephine excitedly presented her quarters, making note of the Dalish wool blankets and Dalish wall hangings. Jan knew Josie did her best to make her feel at home and thanked her accordingly.

After Josie left, Jan was confronted with her own aloneness. The cold stone floor and walls, the empty air. Alone and unoccupied, she felt a primal unease, a discomfort. She thought about her clan, how with them she was never alone, always someone within spitting distance to talk to or simply be near. 

Jan breathed, tentatively sitting on the edge of the bed. It as impossibly big, four posters and plush. She felt like she would be swallowed up into the mattress any minute. She decided to walk the grounds.

Solas sat beneath a tree, scouring a thick leather tome with a focused expression. The few times she’d caught him reading he’d seemed oblivious to her presence. This time, he glanced up at her as she approached. She watched him perform a quick calculation, taking her body language and expression into account, to determine the nature of her visit.

“You always look so serious when you read.” He did not smile but his eyes crinkled as if he did.

“I am serious about the texts I choose to read.” Solas replied, closing the book over his thumb to save his place. Jan nodded gravely.

“Of course you are.” She folded her hands behind her back, cocking her head to the side. “Is there anything you’re _not_ serious about?” This time, he did smile.

“There is not.” His reply was lighter than she was used to, maybe even sarcastic. Solas’ words were normally careful and considered with varying levels of gravitas. Jan couldn’t help but wonder how informal she could get him to speak.

“I would expect nothing less.” Jan smirked and sat down in the grass beside him, leaning over peak at the book’s cover. “What are you reading, then?”

“A retelling of the fall of Arlathan. It was written by an Orlesian author, so it is doubtless wholly inaccurate.” He passed the book to her and her fingers brushed his when she took it. Jan felt the embossed cover, chewing the inside of her lip.

“Isn’t it sad, reading things like this? Fictitious or not, it’s a tragedy being recounted by oppressors.” Jan saw his gaze soften into something like fondness and she felt a swell in her chest.

“It is unfortunate, but necessary. Historical texts are much like the spirits of fade; to construct an accurate image of the past, one must consider all available points of view.” 

Jan did not like this answer, but figured Solas was right. Still, she had no interest in learning about her heritage through some pompous Orlesian academic who was perversely obsessed with Elven history. Everything else in the world of men- in Ferelden, or Orlais, the Free Marches- was lousy with third-hand accounts of what life is or had been for her people by way of anthropology. It made her bristle. 

“Has this book told you anything you didn’t already know?” Jan asked, stroking his ego a little, smirking in an effort to banish her maudlin thoughts. She handed the book back to him and he seemed pleased to receive the compliment.

“Not really.” Solas smiled. He ran his fingers over the book’s cover like she had. “Except for the politics surrounding writing a book about Elven culture in modern Orlais.”

“An unpopular move?” Jan asked, though she knew the answer. She knew Orlesians politics enough to navigate a cursory conversation, though she wished she didn’t. Still, she liked to know what Solas thought. 

“As unpopular as any effort to educate the public of the undesirables always is. Humans dislike learning the history of the people beneath their boot heel.” Jan snorted.

“They never change, it seems.” Jan looked out at the rest of the courtyard, feeling alien among all the human faces throughout it. The few elves that had reached Skyhold tended to flat-ears from the city who, while Jan held no ill will towards them, did not make her feel any more at home. 

She glanced back at Solas. He never seemed like a flat-ear to her, perhaps because he was so knowledgeable, unlike city elves who were often denied that education. He met her gaze. He looked serious, like he always did. Solas cleared his throat.

“I hope you will forgive dour topic of conversation, lethallan.” Whenever he spoke Elven Jan felt a little jolt in her spine. “I am sure that contemplating the plight of our people will only intensify your stress.”

“Well, I _did_ ask what you were reading.” Jan shrugged, stretching her neck to ease the tension there. “I won’t begrudge you for it _much_.” She teased. Solas smiled, and then did another silent calculation- she could not see his eyes but felt them do another inventory of her expressions. Then he stood gracefully from his spot beneath the tree and offered her a hand.

“Would you care for a walk, Inquisitor?” Jan stared at his hand for a moment. His fingers were elegant; Jan thought they looked strong, too. She didn’t need help standing up, and usually hated when men offered her their hands or warned of approaching puddles. Still, she took his.

“I would.” When she withdrew her fingers, she could have sworn he’d squeezed it ever so slightly, as if hesitant to let go.

\---

They walked outside the hold where there were more trees and less stone, and the noise of the Inquisition camp was dulled by the sound of wind through leaves and the occasional bird’s call. 

They talked more of history, of culture, and of places they had both traveled. Jan was well traveled for a Dalish by way of being a spy. Though clan Lavellen had few interests outside the Free Marches, she had often been tasked with gathering intel on the shemlen world in and around their hunting grounds.

“You are fascinating.” Solas said suddenly after she recalled posing as a servant in an Orlesian nobles’ household directly before the Elven rebellion there. Jan felt her ears get hot and she laughed.

“I am not. But you flatter me.” Perhaps he would think this was modesty, but it wasn’t. Jan’s success as a spy was predicated on her being a forgettable presence, able to blend into a crowd at the drop of a hat.

“But you are.” Solas insisted, giving her an unreadable look. “When I witnessed you close the first breech, I knew, but I now see I did not even know the half of it.” Jan’s stomach clenched. The way he stared at her made the heat in her ears spread to her cheeks.

“I’m just a victim of circumstance.” Jan reasoned that, no matter who had gotten the mark, they would have acted much the same way she did. “Any other poor soul would have done the same had they been given this mark.” She looked at her palm; at the moment the sliver of green was barely visible. She was glad to pretend it wasn’t even there at all.

“You give yourself too little credit.” He said, almost softly, almost kindly. Solas gingerly took her hand and ran a thumb across her palm. She felt electricity there, and it wasn’t the fade magic. His fingers felt soft. Jan did not know how to respond, distracted by the feeling of his fingers, the deliberate slowness with which he dragged them along her skin.

“Perhaps.” Jan said weakly, nodding towards Skyhold. “All the people in there give me enough credit to make up for it.”

“It cannot be comfortable-” Solas was somehow still holding her hand. “To not only be an elf surrounded by men, but one elevated on such a high pedestal.”

“Sometimes I feel they’re all just waiting to see me fall.” Jan admitted without thinking and immediately felt very vulnerable. Their conversations thus far had been mostly banter, nothing too personal. Solas stepped closer towards.

“They may be.” They were close enough that Jan could notice he had a dusting of freckles beneath his eyes and on his nose. “But there are also those who wish to see you succeed.” Then, he added with a flash of white teeth. “To catch you if you fall, to use your metaphor.”

“Which one are you?” Jan asked quietly, mimicking his posture and stepping closer, too. He seems caught off guard by her advance. Jans heart beat loud. 

“I should hope it were obvious.” He held fast, but his eyes flicked around her face. His silent calculations seemed to now be failing him. “After all, you are the hope for our salvation, Inquisitor.”

“Please- Don’t call me that.” Jan shrank away- she did not expect the title to affect her so, but suddenly it stang like an insult. She was the herald, the inquisitor, the savior, the prisoner. She saw a flash of worry play across his face and he placed his hand on her shoulder. 

“I did not mean to…” He trailed off when she touched his hand with her marked palm, the green sliver creating the slightest of vibrations. He watched her, having forgotten to speak.

“To them, I can be Herald, Inquisitor, knife-ear… but to you, I’d rather just be myself.” Jan shrugged, offering a weak smile. She hoped it wasn’t asking too much. 

“Of course,” He was still searching her face for something, but she couldn’t tell what. He hadn’t moved his hand, so nor had she. She stepped closer, still. Some gravity drew her closer to him, and every moment he did not back away made that force pull stronger. “Jan.”

Why was it that simply hearing her name from his lips made her feel on fire? He said it the same way he spoke any other word. Proper, careful. 

“Solas.” She whispered, leaning closer. She could feel his heartbeat with her hand. He didn’t pull away, just watched her with his inscrutable gaze flicking over her face. The hand on her shoulder moved to gently cup her cheek. He looked as if he would speak were he not mesmerized by their closeness.

She mimicked him, allowing her hand to touch his jaw. The muscles there clenched. Jan pulled his face to hers and kissed him. The startled noise he made was one she would remember often, a deep “ah” muffled by her lips. 

Solas’s hand on her face moved to the side of her neck and he pulled her closer still and this time she made a noise, a muffled moan as she felt her knees weaken. His other hand cupped he face and he kissed her with a passion she didn’t know he had.

Suddenly, he broke the kiss, but remained close, his breathing heavy. “We shouldn’t.” He said, but his voice betrayed his desire. Jan should have said something, inquired as to why, or reacted instantly to the perceived rejection. But she couldn’t bear to, instead searching his eyes and running her thumb across his cheek bone.

Solas let out a desperate sigh and kissed her again, harder this time. It was a feral part of him she’d never seen, and it made her whole body burn. She gripped the sides of his tunic as he pulled her body flush with his, taking her tongue into his mouth and sucking.

It was too much, too fast, but somehow not enough. Jan kissed back, dragging her tongue across his lip. He groaned. Jan grabbed his jaw again, deepening the kiss. Solas’s hands slid to her waist, squeezing hard, making her realize how much she ached, how hungry she’d been to be touched, and by him. Then his hands slid to her back pulling her closer, almost painfully. She slid a leg between his thighs and could already feel him hardening.

Solas pulled away again and Jan whimpered, staring at him with glazed eyes, confused. “Forgive me.” He sounded frustrated and sad. “I- I can’t. Forgive me.” It was so unlike him to be at a loss for words. He moved away from her, not with disgust or embarrassment, but with fondness. It confused her. 

“Wait, Solas-” Jan spoke before she knew what she could say, what possible explanation or question she could pose. Had he not wanted to kiss her? What was stopping him if he wanted to? Because she was Inquisitor? Solas shook his head.

“I… will see you back at Skyhold.” He sounded cold but sorry. When he turned his back to her, there was a tiny slump to his shoulders. He left her alone, her skin burning where he’d touched her, lips on fire.

\---

At Skyhold that night, Jan dreamed of the kiss, the sound Solas made when she kissed him, the hum of pleasure he’d let slip despite himself. She dreamed of kissing him again.

She imagined his long, strong fingers dipping between her thighs, feeling how aroused he’d made her and shuddering. She imagined running her fingers over the muscles of his back, of kissing his neck and feeling him move beneath her. Would he let her trail kisses down his chest and abdomen, or would he get impatient and pull her head down to his cock, hard and hot? If he did, she would torture him with slowness, teasing him with her tongue before taking him into her mouth.

Oh, the noise he would make, she could almost hear it, a strangled growl as he tries not to buck into her mouth. And how powerful she would feel, rendering this cool and composed man to a sweating, simpering mess. If he came, she would not swallow it, but spit it on the ground, and he would frown and run a thumb over her spit-covered lips.

Then he would say something, an elven phrase she did not know, and leave her again.

**Author's Note:**

> This was gonna be part of something bigger, but I haven’t figured it out yet. If anyone cares I may have the motivation to continue!


End file.
